Grice could, like Austin, be vague in the geography of France.
"France is," Austin said, "after all, hexagonal" (How to do things with words).
Ditto, Grice recalls when he was Morris-minoring la Cote Azure with D. F. Pears.
"Where does Tallulah live?"
"Tallulah who".
"Mmpf"
"Somewhere in the South of France"
-- "To the right or to the left?"
"I will provide for you an example in which one of my conversational maxims is violated, but its violation, rather, is to be explained by the suppostion of a clash with another conversational maxim. Suppose I am driving the South of France with my friend and colleague, D. F. Pears. Both know that we love Tallulah Bankhead, and would especially love to see _her_, if, to do so, would NOT involve too great a prolongation of our driving. After all Pears gets tired all too soon. He asks me, while in the Antibes, "Where does she live?". I reply, "Somewhere". The gloss would run: "There is no reason to suppose that I am opting out. My answer is perhaps less informative than is required to meet D. F. Pears's needs to _drive_ there. However, my infringement of the first conversational maxim of quantity, 'be as informative as is required' can be explained, perhaps, by the supposition that I am aware that to be more MORE informative would be to utter something that infringed the second maxim of quality, i.e. 'do not say what you lack adequate evidence for'. So, I'm presuming D. F. Pears will catch up my implicature, to the effect that I care a hoot if we do see Tallulah or not after all."
ReplyDelete"And of course I never implicated that it was a "town""!